Andy @ Hillhome.org

I’ve written an open-source workstation inventory scanner plug-in for ZENworks in C#, called zRegScan. It will scan for registry values, as well as printers, then store them in the ZENworks inventory database. I may add more functionality to this, such as scanning for listening TCP ports on the workstation (using only an administrator-defined list of ports, not scanning all ports) and USB devices.

I’m next thinking about writing a plugin using the NAL Authentication Hook to allow for software usage tracking in a database. Lots of customers are asking for this.

The idea is that when someone launches an application, an event would be raised that causes the plugin to write a row to a database table with the application name, date, time, and user. Reports could then be run for usage counts within specified time periods. Not entirely sure of the appropriate data model yet, but I think it’s a good idea.